🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2249@munnari.oz> bpja@munnari.oz (Brett P.J.Adam) writes:
>Careful with all this changing of font names and resource types. I have
>found that MS-WORD (3.02) produces remarkably different line lengths
>for type set in the ACTUAL Bold (or other stylistic variation) and a
>'boldened' font. I.e. If you choose the bold screen font you get
>different results from telling word to boldface the roman version.
>Problem may not be confined to word.

I've noticed that the FOND definitions for the LaserWriter fonts
(including Times, Helvetica, etc.) have a positive value ("$0155") for
the "Extra Width for Bold" field.  They have a zero value for both
"Extra Width for Italic" and "Extra Width for Underline".  What doesn't
make sense about this is that bold type (like italic and underlined
type) on the LaserWriter takes up *no* more room than plain type (at
least in the standard LaserWriter fonts).

So why does Apple include extra space for bold type?  It looks better
on the screen, but as you say, once things get printed out it looks
weird and things may not line up as expected.

This has been true for a long time, although I seem to remember that
when the LaserWriter was first released, the screen versions of the
LaserWriter fonts had no extra width for bold type; I know I thought it
was cool that when you selected "Bold" in MacWrite the spacing on the
screen didn't change (a departure from the behavior of all the
ImageWriter fonts I'd been using).

Can anyone (especially from Apple) comment on this?

-- 
   Steve Baumgarten             | "New York... when civilization falls apart,
   Davis Polk & Wardwell        |  remember, we were way ahead of you."
   {uunet,cmcl2}!esquire!sbb    |                           - David Letterman